It’s time for an intervention. You are in trouble and we desperately need to have a one on one with this. Fashion, I get that trends are what keep you relevant. I, myself love a bit of vintage inspo- as it can invoke those lock and key memories of nostalgia or better times. But to be serious, some fads need to go Thelma and Louise style. Guns ablazing, hands knit together, cowabunga style- the low rise jean had its moment and its time that we leave that grave untouched.

In the uneventful year of 2020, fashion has actually shown us some interesting moments now and then. With the rise of Tik Tok, its so much easier to know what’s in and what’s out. On my feed, sage-green cowl-neck silk dresses are being fitted and flattered, DIY bleach art on baggy jeans garner thousands of likes, and then there’s Y2K. In between cottage core and dark academia, I was honestly quite baffled that something like this would rise from the ashes. For those that don’t know, Y2K is a form of early 2000s fashion. While the name is commonly associated with the widespread panic in the baby Internet age, it has nothing to do with the actual event. Think of crop tops and low rise everything. Being a late 90s baby, I was smack dab peer pressured to conform to the elementary fashion code that was ‘low rise everything.’ It was a lot of torso and the unfortunate butt crack. I hated it, to be short.

Then I hated it even more when it showed up on my feed. I came across this video in which a girl was showing off her latest thrift haul. I could not believe my eyes and ears when she pulled up a low rise mini skirt, the same cut of jeans, one of those ugly 2000s print long sleeves, and those ‘beach’ wave neon colored Karen dresses that I swear is only sold at farmer’s markets. To be clear, I’m all for people wearing what they want to wear. My problem with this trend is that I know it will definitely pass. It’s timeline is very short, and I have this nagging annoyance of people who don’t look ahead to the future. Low rise jeans will never come back- and the people will buy them, to only donate their pair to Goodwill once it’s worn only once or twice.

In my last in-depth article, I pointed fingers at trends being the most unsustainable thing towards fashion. They are short lived, but they create hype- which is why everyone will want to get into what’s cool and in. Y2K is basically the text-book definition of a unsteady trend. We laugh and make top ten articles of the worst 2000s fashion clothing pieces that were popular at the time. And it’s good that we do, because we at least validate the claim that we can do so much better. Low rise bottoms are a classic example of the importance of fashion and function working together. This cut of skirt or pant will always make your figure look short and unproportionable- not to mention that it always sags down. Strange patterns with clashing colors are hard to pair with other items of clothing, as it’s often ditched to the underbelly of the closet that’s left to be forgotten. I’m not going back there, and you shouldn’t either.

The 2000s was an era of experimentation. Nobody really knew what to wear. We experimented with different combinations, we thought that it expressed some level of individuality and personality. If we really put things into perspective, that decade essentially captured what it was like figuring out our dress sense when we were. No one had a clue of what to do, we just threw things together in hopes of cohesiveness. But we grew up, looked back, and fixed our mistakes. There’s a reason why we cringe. It’s because we know that there was a better way of doing things, and we just didn’t realize it at the time.

I think there may be a reason for this revival of clothing. Compared to the dumpster fire of this year and it’s prior time, the 2000s was a relatively fun decade to be a part of. Teens now are nostalgic of those childhood memories when things were better. For the most of us, we weren’t exposed to the horrors of the real world just yet- we were still living in blissful ignorance while playing with our Barbies and Bratz dolls. And now, some individuals are trying to reclaim that past glory of a time where we had a decent social life.

I’m all in for living for those glory days, but I implore you. Some trends make it blatantly obvious that it’s only around for a short amount of time. I’d say we cut our losses before we start making 2021 the year of questionable fashion.